Using Pinterest’s social cred to get in-store shoppers to make purchases

SUMMARY:What’s the newest way to prove to your in-store customers that a product is popular online? Nordstrom is tagging products with the Pinterest logo as a kind of social proof for potential buyers.

It’s pretty common now to see a local restaurant post Yelp reviews or Zagat ratings on their storefront windows, showing the number of stars they got or positive reviews gathered as a sort of social proof for consumers making a decision on where to dine. Want Thai food tonight? Yelp reviewers rated us the Best Thai of San Francisco — therefore, we must be good.

So what’s the equivalent if you go to buy something like shoes or a dress? What’s the social proof when it comes to commerce? Nordstrom is trying out a new way to highlight the popularity of certain products with Pinterest, tagging some of its most pinned items online in the store with the Pinterest logo. It’s one way of trying to tell consumers: This is popular, and here’s how we can prove it to you.

Shoes for sale in Nordstrom, highlighted by which are the most popular on Pinterest right now. Photo courtesy Nordstrom

The company has posted photos of the in-store experiments on both its Facebookand Instagram accounts. So far, it’s only in select stores, but it’s interesting to ask whether you’d be more likely to purchase something if you knew that it was popular among Pinterest users.

We’ve written about how Pinterest is gearing up for a major monetization effort bypartnering with big brands; the Nordstrom example suggests that there probably some interest from the brands as well.

Here’s a photo of shoes for sale in a particular store, tagged by Pinterest popularity: